The launch of LabourStart TV (at http://www.labourstart.tv) may mark the beginning of new era in union communications. I say that knowing that it sounds like hyperbole, and grossly exaggerates what we are doing. But let me explain. We have had the ability for more than a decade now to put videos on the net. The first clunky efforts (who remembers VDOLive?) were replaced by better tools like Real Player. Today’s videos — viewable with software such as Windows Media Player and Quick Time — can actually be quite good. Several of the major media players around the world are investing a lot in the delivery of films and television through the net. The publicly-owned BBC, for example, has announced plans to make nearly all of its programs viewable online.

And popular movements have also embraced the new technology. IndyMedia shows videos. So does OneWorld.
Unions, as usual, have lagged behind. And yet there have been examples for several years now of unions producing quality online video on a regular basis.
The outstanding example is probably the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) with its regular video news. The machinists’ union (IAM) has also been producing videos on a regular basis and making them available through their website. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) uses a digital camcorder to give members a chance to tell their stories, using web-based video as a recruiting tool. And in Vancouver, Working TV has been making its regular television program since the 1990s available through the net.
If you are a member of the CAW, IAM or RWDSU, you may have known this. But even then, you may not have known what other unions are doing. And if you’re not a member of any of those unions, you probably did not know that unions can use, and have been using, this technology for some time now.
I’m reminded a bit of what the trade union movement was like a decade ago. If your union had a website back in the mid-1990s, you might have been able to find out what was happening — in your union. If you wanted to know what was happening in the broader labour movement, there weren’t a lot of ways to find out. To learn about union struggles overseas, you’d have to trawl through many different websites. Today, with news services like LabourStart offering up hundreds of union news stories from around the world every single day, everything has changed. Union members can keep up with union news, and can feel themselves part of a much broader international movement.
This has clearly changed the consciousness of many trade union members who now regularly participate in online campaigns in support of fellow workers in other countries. Websites that offer up international labour news have contributed a lot to that change of consciousness.
LabourStart.tv aims to do the same thing, only with sound and moving images. Here is how it works: The 350 volunteer LabourStart correspondents around the world can now add links to video files in addition to links to text-based news stories. Those video links are collected and displayed on LabourStart TV. Visitors to LabourStart TV can click on any of the links and watch and listen to labour news presented in a different way.
Right now, we’re showing a video of the Iraqi labour solidarity tour, produced for U.S. Labor Against the War. We’re showing a short tribute produced by the IAM to honor Rosa Parks. We have three short animated films produced by British trade unions — all of them, by the way, quite amusing. We have links to several speeches given at the recent founding convention of the Change to Win federation.
We know that all of this is a bit new for many union members, so we’ve made it easy to view the films. There are links to the software you might need next to each film, depending on its file type. But for most people with modern computers, you just click on the link and the video starts playing.
Like LabourStart, LabourStart TV does not create its own news content. We link to existing videos produced by unions.
As I write these words, we are showing links to 39 union videos produced in the last few months. By the time you read this, there will be many more. Already, you can spend several hours watching these videos.
Moving images with sound can do things that text cannot. We all know this. All of us watch television, play videos and DVDs, and go to the cinema.
We all know the value of film as a tool for propaganda — think back to early Soviet film pioneers like Eisenstein. When his classic, “Battleship Potemkin,” was first shown in German cinemas, the audience rioted. Movies can move us profoundly — and they can move us to act.
I look forward to showing links to union videos in dozens of languages from around the world, showing workers in struggle and moving all of us to greater activity.
To do this requires that there be at least one place on the web that puts all of this together, that shows us what unions are doing and what can be done. The creation of such a place does offer the promise of a new era in labour communications. That is why I am so excited about LabourStart TV.